When Gaza was being strafed by sea and air, 500 Palestinian dead to 1 Israeli dead. Since the ground invasion, that total has come down to 30 to 1 and a daily average of 6 to 1.

Suddenly all those, including Obama, who did not call for ceasefire when Palestinians were being killed like helpless fish in a barrel, urgently, desperately want one now from a new found humanitarian concern.

Some lives matter more than others, apparently.

UPDATE

I should add an important point. 90% of the Palestinian dead are civilians. All of the Israeli dead are soldiers with one exception, and he was a lawful target as he was conveying supplies to front line soldiers. The Palestinian resistance is perfectly legal and legitimate. The Israeli attack on civilians is a sustained war crime.

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Ben Gorian Airport is shut-down and all the operators have cancelled their flights to Isreal, and in an effort to stop the total international air travel isolation the operation have been moved to Eilat airport that cannot manage a fraction of the traffic, in keeping an stiff upper lip, that Hamas has manage to disrupt the mighty Isreal despite getting pounded to dust.

All the while UK major TV outlets are broadcasting the events in Kiev airport.

“When a rocket from Gaza slammed into the community of Kaser A-Ser on Saturday, Auda al-Wadj, 32, had no defense. Like 100,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, al-Wadj lived in a shantytown of tin shacks, with no bomb shelters. He died; four family members were hospitalized.

Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled Sunday that the state is not obligated to provide bomb shelters to the Bedouin. “

The aftermath of MH17 has taken Gaza away from the attention of the media and hence the great British public.

This is from Swee Ang who founded Medical Aid for Palestinians after she witnessed the horrors of Sabra and Shatila. The Israelis under Sharon let the Lebanese ‘Christian’ philangists in to do their evil.

Dear Friends,

The situation is Gaza is dire and some of us feel unable to do anything except to watch people die. The above is the live link of a letter to Lancet. We will be really grateful if you kindly read, circulate and leave a comment if you want to show your support for the dying people of Gaza.

If each one of us do a small bit, make a small difference, then together we will make a great difference for Gaza.

“We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.

On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.

We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.

We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008. Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.

This action also terrifies those who are not directly hit, and wounds the soul, mind, and resilience of the young generation. Our condemnation and disgust are further compounded by the denial and prohibition for Gaza to receive external help and supplies to alleviate the dire circumstances.

The blockade on Gaza has tightened further since last year and this has worsened the toll on Gaza’s population. In Gaza, people suffer from hunger, thirst, pollution, shortage of medicines, electricity, and any means to get an income, not only by being bombed and shelled. Power crisis, gasoline shortage, water and food scarcity, sewage outflow and ever decreasing resources are disasters caused directly and indirectly by the siege…”

Totally agree Craig. Ramzi Baroud gave good advice on Palestinians right to defend themselves..”Those who still found loopholes in international law to deny the Palestinian people the right to defend themselves had to deal with yet another resolution. Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of 1949, (Act 1 C4), passed in 1977, declared that armed struggle can be used, as a last resort, as a method of exercising the right of self-determination. One can hardly argue that Israel’s decades long occupation of Palestinian land, the full-fledged apartheid regime it instituted in the Occupied Territories, the loud violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the seizer of the land, the destruction of property, and most importantly, the refusal to honor nearly 70 United Nations Resolutions amid daily killings and assassinations of Palestinians, acts recognized by the Convention and by leading human rights groups as war crimes, qualify Palestinians, as it always did to fight back using armed struggle”.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1605.htm

Glad you’re continuing to put this up, Craig. I’m currently struck by the rising furore being reported re our sales of arms to Russia. Presumably this derives from our righteous condemnation of Russia’s re-annexation of Crimea.

Yes, another remnant echoing into the present from British foreign policy meddling… when the British gave the Zionists the nod. From the failed state of Pakistan, the Sri Lankan civil war and more, THIS really is LIVING Apartheid, raging, burning with no end of the fire in sight.

% wise, sources are saying Hamas have killed far more of their enemy’s military personnel than the Israelis have of theirs –with 70% to 80% of the death’s attributed to Israel being civilian.

A very good point.
I’m interested by the language, the “Israelis” say they are attacking “Hamas” terrorists.
Aren’t the Palestinians who happened to democratically vote for “Hamas” Israelis too?and,the “Israelis” who are attacking these Palestinian are not “Israeli” because they do not include Palestinians.
Shouldn’t we correctly say that this is an attack by Jewish Israelis (or perhaps Zionists) on Israelis of Palestinian descent?

I see Nick Clegg is attacking David Ward for telling the truth (again). It is going to be hard to discipline Ward after next year, when thanks to his support for the Palestinians he will be the Lib Dems only MP.

“Personally, I couldn’t help but think of a rather similar 2008 remark made by Ehud Barak, former Israeli prime minister and decorated general: “If I were a Palestinian.. I would have joined a terrorist organisation.””

“David Ben Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti – Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121.

I am confused. For months the Sovereign state of Israel suffered rocket attacks from Hamas but did nothing and then when Hamas launch rockets which target the capital they decide enough is enough and retaliate. It is in no way the fault of Israel how Hamas decide to format their defence stratergies in using their citizens to garner support from the west just as it is no way Israel’s fault if Hamas choose to declare war on a formidible military force whilst having vastly inferior forces. As I understand international law, although of course their may be an exceptipn appertaining to Palestine, a sustained, unprovoked rocket attack on a sovereing state IS a declaration of war. Hamas started this fight and the last one. It is said you desrve the Government you vote for; maybe the citizens of Gazza should think a little harder the next time they vote, because Israel is not going to back down to these sort of ‘peace seeking ‘ actions.

I was speaking to a Jewish friend yesterday. Incidentally he has been to Gaza several times as a human shield thing, you know, trying to protect children against the IDF. Anyway, he was arguing that Isareal is doomed. One day it’s usefulness to the larger empire will no longer exist and quicker than you can say “happy holidays” the US weapons will stop arriving. He also says a few things about the Jews bringing it on themselves. He is a naturally funny man my friend. Back to the point. He says Israelis doomed.

Of course this scenario seems totally impossible to many today. To rabid Israelis. To those who hate the Jews. Possibly even to you. However, such people are blinded by ignorance. They credit strange cult related nonsense for Israels power and so cannot imagine a very human political demise.

We forget how unchangeable the world seemed when staring with disbelief at apartheid South Africa. Or Soviet Russia. We didn’t see the end of that one coming did we?

The world changes quickly. Perhaps my friend has a point. What will you say then, John Leon, the day the flow of military hardware stops?

The reason why there was no call for a ceasefire before Israeli casualties is because of an international caste system.
UK and US see all lesser races beneath themselves except for Israeli Jews who they view as their masters.

And I thought Gazza played for Newcastle!
I also thought that Gaza was in Israel and it’s citizens are therefore Israeli.
Incidentally,do we know if there are any British citizens fighting with the Israeli army?and if so are they risking their UK citizenship?perhaps even the subject of manslaughter or other charges on return?

Palestinians still occupy pockets of their own territory. The Israeli’s regard all Palestinians as terrorists and therefore legitimate targets,including children, women,young boys, donkeys, you name it.The terrorists need to be eradicated before there can be peace,or as Netanyahu said, quiet ! There is nothing more quiet than the dead.So the game plan is to rid Palestine of its people so the Israeli’S can live in peace. It’s that simple.

Yes there are British volunteers with the IDF. Have been for years.
When I was on a Kibbutz at Givat Hashalosha and then a Moshav at Hatseva in the Negev, there were recruitment drives.This happened once you’d enrolled in a Hebrew class. It wasn’t that badly paid I seem to remember.

Thanks, Je. Barak it was, and I recollect finding the Ben-Gurion quote too. The Western commentator still eludes me: it was someone more surprising than Lady Ashton (whom God preserve), I think.

Phil: I know. But the fact that our embargo on Russia was a PR lie is now official. Check my link (as we begin again to reconsider our position re. spheres-of-influence in Eastern Europe)

Note also the resurfacing of the Litvinenko poisoning. Suddenly there is to be an enquiry. It was very strongly rumoured at the time that our silence on this was conditioned by our, or the EU’s energy interests.

We’re stirring it as hard as we can on Russia, now. My point is that we are able to do this with Russia, but remain paralysed on Israel. It was possible to get observers some sort of guarantee for their safety at the MH117 crash site within ten days. It is virtually impossible to get observers inside Gaza at all, and they have to take their chances with everyone else.

What is obscene is that even when the Palestinians are being herded into the gas chambers, or whatever other ‘final solution’ the Zionists choose, Cameron and Obama, Hollande and Clegg wil continue spouting “Israel has a right to defend itself. Any other regime committing these war crimes would be under strict sanctions. Not Israel; the UK and US are busy providing the weapons for these war crimes.

Yes, Phil. That’s as hard as we can stir it. Thank you, The Market, and thank you, the eunuch politicians, and that’s as pretty inadequate as it gets. But we’re not even going that far on Gaza, are we? We’re prepared at least to feed the media some self-righteously hostile crap on Russia/Ukraine – as we didn’t, after, e.g., the USS Vincennes’ very similar attack on a civil airliner – but not to utter much of a peep or even impose some token sanctions on an intentional mass killer of civilians which has our ‘elected’ leaders by the balls.

AlcAnon – thanks. Thought it was Cherie, but not certain enough to say so. She did. Her husband has said nothing on the topic since the 16th, but I see the revisionists have been busy on his appalling reputation in both the Guardian and the Telegraph today. Tony Blair Associates are hoping to bring the Third Way back to Labour….he’ll be able to take the credit for the complete destruction of the Labour party if successful.

I have just looked up the weather in Gaza. 34C Sunny but a mist is producing 100% humidity! It must be quite unbearable. No water. No electricity for refrigeration, a fan or aircons if they have any. 34C-32C forecast all week.

cf the Israeli lifestyle. Swimming pools, as much electricity as they want, sprinklers on the lawn and lots of (Palestinian) water.

One of the 17 Israeli power stations is on the coast north of Gaza. I see they even acquired (stolen) the Palestine Electric Company and renamed it. That’s chutzpah for you.

“The Palestinian resistance is perfectly legal and legitimate. The Israeli attack on civilians is a sustained war crime.”

These legal boundaries again. I hate international law. Reminds me a weathercock. Strong power can turn it into the direction that benefits them just like strong wind turn weathercock. What we (civilised societies) should be working towards is criminalise every attempt of murder (by individuals, states, NGOs etc). But then, how would arms producing corporations make profit? How investment banks will speculate on ups and downs? How would we make barrel of oil to cost 107USD?

Once again what is legal or legitimate does not necessary mean good. Just like events in Germany in 1933 or presidential elections in Uzbekistan for the last 20 years.

I’m beginning to like the sound of Edward Macmillan-Scott. I know nothing about him and have no political affiliations.

‘There was further controversy when Edward Macmillan-Scott, a former Lib Dem MEP who lost his seat in May, tweeted that Ward could look after himself, but members of the board of deputies were a “frightful bag of disputatious Jews”, while the editor of the Jewish Chronicle was “a prat”. He later apologised for the statement while swiping again at the group for not saying sorry to him in a previous dispute.

The board said it was deeply concerned about Macmillan-Scott’s comments and considered his subsequent tweeted apology wholly inadequate.’

Central to much of our international work is the community’s relationship with the State of Israel, which is why the Board remains unwavering in its approach, as stated in our Constitution, to take ‘such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing.’

This policy allows us to accommodate the diverse opinions that exist within the community, without us presuming to comment on or seek to prescribe particular political solutions on the people of Israel.

Rather, we concentrate on the undoubted effect of events in the region on the British Jewish community, and the importance of Israel being treated fairly and impartially within British society, in the face of campaigns to demonise, boycott and sanction the Jewish State.

We take practical steps to advance Israel’s cause and engage with Israel in four main areas:

Macmillan-Scott is a good man. I think he’s a grandson or great-nephew of Lawrence of Arabia. He once showed me (when I bumped into him on Eurostar) Lawrence’s own map of the Middle East which Lawrence was using in the Middle East negotiations to argue for Arab unity rather than Sykes-Picot.

Oh Phil, you are SO ‘ard.
Shalom, I was not born until after the 40’s, so in no way was I responsinle for stealing anything, you would not be related to Phil by any chance?
I just received an email from a pal in Israel. An Israeli soldier was shot dead by a sniper yesterday. His wife knew him from school days, so there are some IDF dead.( as well as some Americans )

Craig – that’s the rational way of looking at it. Another might be the view that the Liberal hierarchy pressured him into implicit agreement with the zios…why vote Liberal? Granted, Clegg is the only leader currently even hinting that Israel needs to do some rethinking, but I’m seeing no plans from anyone on preventing exactly the same happening again after another two years of land annexation. Which as a first requirement would IMO involve telling it like it is and not instantly deferring to a 1% minority’s (self-styled) representatives.

Painful to watch these over armed and over protected thugs and cowards in action. Filmed on the ‘West Bank’ somewhere.

Just a tiny fragment of the whole. In every minute they are oppressing the native people. In this they are pitiless and utterly cruel – with a few exceptions.

In the so called West Bank (there is no bank – the entity occupies the west bank of the Jordan – a foetid trickle because of the entity’s greed for irrigation water, plus a good swathe of land to the west.) All the time it is eaten into by the settlers from Brooklyn and elsewhere making ‘aliyah’.

Some key facts – this formerly beautiful land is THE PROMISED LAND. In 1800 there were 3000 Jews in Palestine. There were about 600,000 in 1948 many of that number resulting from illegal immigration during the mandate. There were about 1.45 million Palestinians of whom 20% were Christian and 80% Muslim.

800,000 Palestinians, that is two-thirds, were ethnically cleansed – ghastly euphemism – many ending in Gaza.

Excluding Jews of good and warm hearts who speak against the current hell, many regard the Gentile as goyim ie cattle. This would be a very extreme a thought but one RABBI did say that one Jewish fingernail is worth more that 1 million Arabs. That was a dramatic example of an attitude which reinforces the hatred engendered in many. That hatred comes in part from knowing the Palestinian position is lawful AND also because they hate the Palestinian for being their victims. There must be a psychological explanation for that.

~~

Thanks for that Craig ref Mr Macmillan-Scott. A good egg. Is there much public protest in Spain about Gaza?

Ba’al I did see your link after I posted the Guardian link which was written two hours earlier than your link. In those two hours he must have been bullied and threatened as he is a tough man.

You ignore David Ward’s MO. He says something forthright and true on Palestine and gets into all the media. Then Clegg – who is an uber-Zionist, don’t be fooled – has a go at him, and he apologises. Then he does it again. It’s a kind of asymmetric warfare!

David Ward is a pillock for apologising. In the other house of parliament, Jenny Tonge was told by Menzies Campbell to withdraw her remarks, on orders he received from the very same Board of Deputies, and she had the backbone to refuse and get sacked. She has more principle than Ward.

All Palestinian rockets fired into territories occupied in 1948, 1967, whenever, are legitimate.

OK Craig, point belatedly taken, and Clegg’s real position isn’t a mystery. But by remaining in the party, he’s tacitly endorsing the now-impossible two-state “solution” and in my worthless opinion he’d have been better telling Clegg to fuck off and standing as an independent next time. Who knows, he might even have got in, but in any case it could have been a publicity goldmine of a campaign.

I suspect that the heat felt by public figures who step out of line on the Zionism question is significantly greater when a massacre such as the one in Gaza is going on than when the slaughter rate is more ‘normal’.

It’s kind of all hands to the pumps even in the outer circle of Zionist influence-wielders.

The same was true

* when they wanted to get hold of Mordechai Vanunu

* on the day of the 7/7 terrorist bombings, and the days following, and

* during the 2009 Gaza massacre.

As for anything about the Israeli involvement in the organ trade; the role of the Chabad mafia organisation in the drug trade, especially ecstasy; or treading on the toes of Marks and Spencer’s…public figures will feel the heat ANY TIME THEY CARE TO MAKE THE ZIONISTS’ DAY!

If you take a look at the Telegraph-mediated ‘MPs expenses’ scandal’, I think there was a big dose of ‘treatment’ involved in that – in getting rid of unwanted MPs. Look at the timing.

Consider someone such as Barry Sheerman, chair of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee. He’s a right crook and he flaunts his role as a lobbyist for private interests, even if the word “think tank” is used rather than “lobby group”. (He’s head of Policy Connect.) So the fall of so many during the ‘expenses scandal’ wasn’t really about cleaning out the stables. It was about something else.

I think when you grow up you realise that people tend to say things they don’t mean, quite often what they say means the opposite of how it sounds but people still know what it means. You know that “don’t call me I’ll call you” means you won’t hear from them, you know that “the cheque is in the post” means that the cheque hasn’t been sent, everybody knows what “just nipping out for a quick one” means.

I think anyone with an ounce of sense knows when they read “Palestinians also fire rockets into Israel” at the end of an article what it means. Everybody knows that whoever wrote the article just tags that onto everything because they have to. Nobody actually believes people think that justifies Israel’s actions. They write the words in such a way to make it obvious. I think it goes without saying that when someone apologises about saying something about Israel it doesn’t mean that they are actually sorry, it means the opposite.

Baroness Tonge will not be intimidated, they have tried, I had the pleasure of meeting her in Liverpool, she claimed the US backing of Israel right or wrong is part of the problem and that she was too old to worry about what they [the establishment] could do to her. A genuinely good and truthful person, wish there were more like her.

I switched off the radio on learning that Melanie Philips was, unsurprisingly and again, to be on the panel of The Moral Maze (on now). So that’s the partisan Israel shill. Where’s the balancing voice for Gaza? Matthew Taylor? Blairite nonentity. Giles Fraser? Right-on re Occupy, and credit for that, but hardly outspoken on Gaza (and draws flak from Hasbara Harry’s Place and CiF Watch even on what he does say) Jill Kirby? Centre for Policy Studies : neocon think tank.

Using tunnels, mines, booby traps and snipers, Hamas fighters have inflicted record casualties on Israeli troops waging an offensive in the Gaza Strip, applying years of training in urban warfare with a new tactical acumen and suicidal resolve.

The Israelis say weapons and know-how supplied by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah make Hamas a more formidable foe.

It is becoming more evident that the zionist thugs are not winning this war, their main airport shut-down, and international carriers refusing to fly there, as well as their precious supremacist death toll on the rise, that is in the face of fighting a bunch of refugees in a concentration camp.

Meanwhile the audacious Ward daring to say anything in support of the Palestinians under the onslaught of heavy artillery barrage of the zionist scum; that is post a seven years of medieval siege Gaza by land, air, and sea.

This outburst of a goy has upset the “sensitive” zionist bullies who cannot afford the slightest dissent against their inhuman, racist, barbaric creed of hate, theft and murder.

Nick Clegg faces growing calls to suspend an MP who said he would be prepared to fire a Hamas rocket at Israeli civilians.

David Ward, the MP for Bradford East, provoked widespread anger amongst Jews in Britain and overseas after he wrote on Twitter: “The big question is – if I lived in #Gaza would I fire a rocket? – probably yes”.

He added: “Ich bin ein #palestinian – the West must make up its mind – which side is it on?”

Asked about the comments this morning, Mr Ward said his critics “jump straight on the anti-Semitism bandwagon”.

In a rare intervention, Daniel Taub, the Israeli ambassador, wrote to Nick Clegg to express his “shock and disgust” at the remarks.

Oh the humanity of it all, someone in the officialdom has dared to voice what millions of ordinary people think. This is the kind of power display to remind who is the boss, and no doubt Mr. Clegg will oblige, and threaten to send ward to be genitally mutilated as part of his punishment.

Although no one is talking about the fact that the Zionist thugs have ordered the evacuation of the Shifa Hospital, as a precursor in a preparation to bombarding and shelling the hospital.

Israel’s military has issued an evacuation warning to the main hospital in the Gaza Strip as Tel Aviv regime’s aerial and ground forces step up their attacks on civilian sites across the besieged coastal enclave.

All the while Faux “news” is airing clips of bombed out rubble in Gaza in it packages accompanying the narrative of attack on zionistan, in the way of justifying the barbaric and murderous crime of the zionist scum war crimes.

Evidently the renowned Middle East scholar Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University goes on record;

“I’m not talking about what we should or shouldn’t do. I’m talking about the facts. The only thing that deters a suicide bomber is the knowledge that if he pulls the trigger or blows himself up, his sister will be raped. That’s all. That’s the only thing that will bring him back home, in order to preserve his sister’s honor.”

Kedar served for 25 years in the military intelligence, where he specialised in Islamic groups. He is currently a researcher at the right-wing Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies of Bar Ilan but previously worked for a shadowy organisation, the Israel Academia Monitor, which fights left-leaning academic professors.

A former Nazi guard living in Philadelphia died hours before he was ordered to be extradited to Germany for trial on suspicion of helping carry out the Holocaust, according to his attorney.

Johann Breyer, 89, died Tuesday night, Dennis E. Boyle, his lawyer, told the Los Angeles Times. A federal judge approved his extradition on Wednesday, according to court records.
“Like other accused war criminals, Breyer must submit to the judgment of law for his alleged role in Nazi atrocities against humanity,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice wrote, apparently unaware that Breyer’s own mortality had already taken a hand.

I was reminded while I was browsing earlier, I think by The Saker, of
Picasso’s “Guernica” depicts the horrific bombing of the Spanish by German and Italian fascists during the Spanish Civil War.

When Colin Powell and John Negroponte were peddling war with Iraq at the UN, the succeeded in getting the 11 x 25 ft painting covered with a curtain for the duration of the conference.

There’s a tale that Picasso himself while living in Nazi-occupied Paris, was visited by the SS. Upon seeing a photo of Guernica an officer asked, “Is that your work?” To which Picasso is said to have replied, “No, it’s yours.”

In the light of presesent bombardments of civilians in Palestine and Ukraine maybe they should find that curtain and put it back up. Easier than doing their job.

…

OT.

Confirmation here today that a lizard never changes his spots. As if anyone was fooled! Good to see him back.

” My friend’s home just got bombed without prior warning. His father, mother, brother, sister and nephew were killed. He is in a serious condition. I don’t know what to say! I don’t fucking know what to say! I just….No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ”

‘Geneva: The United Nations on Wednesday launched an international inquiry into human rights violations and crimes that may have been committed by Israel during its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

The UN Human Rights Council condemned the Israeli assault which it said had involved “disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks”, including aerial bombing of civilian areas, collective punishment, and the killing of more than 650 Palestinians.

At the end of an emergency session, the 47-member forum adopted a resolution presented by Palestinians by a vote of 29 states in favour, 1 against (the United States) with 17 abstentions (including all nine European Union members).

“You take my water
Burn my olive trees
Destroy my house
Take my job
Steal my land
Imprison my father
Kill my mother
Bomb my country
Starve us all
Humiliate us all
But … I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”

(Placard first seen in Gaza, 2012.)

July 23, 2014 “ICH” – The “most moral army in the world” from “the only democracy in the Middle East” has attacked hospitals, a home for the disabled, a geriatric hospice, demolished five mosques, razed entire neighbourhoods, erased entire families – the youngest – so far – just three days old if you do not count the unborn, as in the case of twenty nine year old Samar Al Hallaq (1) killed with her two sons, aged four and five, other members of her family and carrying her third child. Her husband was critically injured.

Yet again a war is declared against children and the young. Forty three percent of Gaza’s population is aged 0-14 and just under twenty one percent, 15-24. (Index Mundi, 2013.) Thus sixty four percent, 0-24.

As Israel trades on eternal victim status whilst murdering neighbouring, fellow Semites with seeming legal impunity, stealing land, obliterating homes, nullifying history preceding even the coming of Christ in the land of his birth, the UN bleats weakly, as ever, of “concern” and “regret” some countries have had enough.

• Karl Sabbagh is absolutely right to say: “If the British had bombed and mortared houses in Catholic districts of Northern Ireland … and tried to justify it on the basis that it was trying to stop IRA terrorism, there would have been an outcry” (Letters, 23 July). But the analogy is a false one. Sinn Féin was not firing rockets daily at the civilian population of the UK in the way Hamas has been doing intermittently but all too frequently to Israel ever since Israel withdrew from Gaza.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords

Heavy shelling on Khan Younis in the southern area of Gaza. It is a very highly populated area.

23 Palestinians killed in Gaza Strip since midnight

5 killed in shelling on al-Qarrara in Khan Younis
23/07/2014
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Five Palestinians were killed in the neighborhood of al-Qarrara in Khan Younis on Wednesday amid heavy Israeli shelling.

Medics dug the bodies of Mahmoud and Nour al-Abadleh as well as Hassan Khalil Salah Abu Jamus, 29, and Muhammad Farid al-Astal from the rubble of buildings in two separate areas.

A Tania Bryer is reviewing the papers on Sky News. She does sleb interviews for some US channel. She is Jewish and all she had to say when the shocking Gaza headlines came up was that the 600,000 Jews in France are now very frightened for their safety and that this is 70 years after the war. She was presumably alluding to anti-Semitism, Kristallnacht and the holocaust.